"This
is a special night for Mack Avenue. We couldn't be more proud of Billy
Childs, Christian McBride, and Cécile McLorin Salvant for their wins in the Best Jazz
Instrumental Album, Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, and Best Jazz
Vocal Album categories. With eight nominations we've had
butterflies since the nominees were announced! We salute
every one of them." -- Denny
Stilwell (president, Mack Avenue Records)
Best Jazz
Instrumental Album Winner:
Billy Childs - Rebirth
Since his
first recordings of the 1980s, Billy Childs has developed into one of the most
distinctive and distinguished composers of our time. An accomplished symphonic
writer, he has also amassed a career's worth of jazz originals that can swing
hard, dazzle with intricacy, touch you with direct simplicity, or mesmerize
with crystalline lyricism. On his Mack Avenue debut album Rebirth, Childs reaches
back to the start of his almost astoundingly varied musical experience-leading
a small jazz band of state-of-the-art musicians with his piano playing.
At his
musical core, Childs is an improvising pianist. He has the ability to equally
distill the harmonic and rhythmic languages of classical music and jazz into
his playing. The wide-ranging vocabulary on some tracks begs the question of
Childs' love of classical music; "I'm not just jazz," he stresses.
His insistent pulse and melodically probing introduction to song is a key to
the Childs' musical identity: open to extended harmonic possibilities as they
come along, taking a flexible approach to time and leaving an open door for
input from his bandmates.
A Los
Angeles native, Childs grew up in a home hearing his parents' musical tastes:
Bach, Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim, the Swingle Singers. As Childs
developed, he was deeply touched by the music of Emerson, Lake & Palmer,
the Modern Jazz Quartet and Laura Nyro, among other contemporary musicians. As
a young player, Childs took his bandstand boot camp in the bands of trombonist
J.J. Johnson and trumpet titan Freddie Hubbard. While his compositions and
orchestrations have taken Childs into a realm that transcends jazz venues, the
fact remains that the improvising pianist is largely the product of his tenures
as band pianist with those two late masters.
Best Large
Ensemble Jazz Album Winner:
Christian
McBride Big Band - Bringin' It
Iconic
bassist Christian McBride has been doing what the title of his upcoming big
band album implores for years: Bringin' It. This highly anticipated release,
which follows the Christian McBride Big Band's 2011 Grammy® Award-winning
debut, The Good Feeling, puts his status and skills as an all-around
entertainer on full display.
A key aspect
that has helped the bassist find his voice as an arranger is the fact that,
except for drummer Quincy Phillips, this is the exact same band that recorded
the big band album with him six years ago. "These guys know my sound. They
know my style. They know what my compositional and arranging DNA is. I've been
able to keep the exact same unit, so like Duke Ellington used to do, I can
write for my guys because I know their sound and style."
While the
music played by the Christian McBride Big Band is on the cutting edge of 21st
century large ensemble music, the orchestra's presentation, like its sound,
respects the past while looking forward. Danny Ray, the legendary stage
announcer for James Brown, travels with the group to give the leader an
old-school intro before playing his thoroughly modern music.
With a list
of growing accolades including his recent appointment as Artistic Director at
the Newport Jazz Festival, hosting shows on SiriusXM ("The Lowdown:
Conversations with Christian") and NPR ("Jazz Night in America,"
as well as frequent online contributions to various programs including "All
Things Considered"), speaking engagements, and occasional DJ performances
under the alias DJ Brother Mister, he's more than just a bandleader: Christian
McBride is transcending that title to something more complete.
Best Jazz
Vocal Album Winner:
Cécile
McLorin Salvant - Dreams and
Daggers
GRAMMY®
Award-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin
Salvant has had a remarkable rise to stardom in her professional career, and
she took another big leap forward with
Dreams and Daggers, her third album for
Mack Avenue Records.
"The
songs on this album are of dreams and daggers. The daggers have been used at
times to attack, at times to defend. For power, no doubt, to take it, to keep
it. The dreams are the ones I caught looking out a window, or from the light
sleep before the deep. I don't always know what they mean, but they are the ones
I was able to keep. And yet dreams can be desires too. I wrote them down to
make them true. That we may bring our wildness into view. That we may be
unruled and unruly," explains McLorin Salvant.
In 2013,
McLorin Salvant made her Mack Avenue Records debut with WomanChild, garnering a
GRAMMY® Award nomination, NPR Music's pick for "Best Jazz Vocal Album of
the Year," and three placements in DownBeat's critic's poll as "Jazz
Album of the Year," "Top Female Vocalist," and "Best Female
Jazz Up and Coming Artist of the Year," among many other accolades. Her
2015 follow up release, For One To Love, won the GRAMMY® Award for "Best
Jazz Vocal Album."
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